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Wednesday, March 31, 1999

Post Global Music

Heres an atypical remix album by an atypical experimental artist. Dave Pajo, aka Aerial M, is a Louisville-born musician who has worked with intellectual underground post-rock bands such as Slint, Tortoise and Stereolab. Whatever.

Allowing four particularly distinct music artists to take a crack at remixing his composition, "Wedding Song #3," Pajo exposes us to several different aspects of his singular craft. In a general sense, Aerial M creates a hypnotic, soft-rhythm, minimalist milieu using layers of subliminal guitars and innovative electronic accouterment. Pajos Post Global Music may be a tongue-in-cheek jab at the always-ambiguous "post-rock" moniker, but the music here is indeed sophisticated instrumental music informed by a rock sensibility, as much as having a quasi-ambient quality  in a post-classical kind of way.

With talented sound artists such as his fellow ex-Tortoise compatriot Bundy K. Brown remanipulating the sonic world of Pajo, Aerial Ms remix disc is a psychedelic pastiche of cyclical sound crafts, sonorous samples and seductive improvisation. While I personally can barely discern where one mix ends and another begins, this disc flows from the resolutely funky to the spontaneously jazzy and on to the blatantly experimental. Whether building up or stripping down Pajos simple, ever-recurring musical themes, studio rats Flacco and DJ Your Food both successfully tinker with Aerial Ms mesmerizing sonic templates. German jazz-progsters Tied & Tickled Trio merely add saxophone and an upright bass to Pajos original rhythm track, while Bundy K. Brown incorporates a patchwork mini-history of Pajos recorded output with the same composition.